“With free agency, what we're doing is we're unbundling that from selecting your idea and taking capital. So there's no strings attached. There's no cohorts. There's no demo day. There's no kind of deal that you have to take. It is really this period of open exploration.”
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More from Willem Van Lancker
Insight
Van Lancker: Founders cannot outsource conviction to investors with misaligned portfolio incentives
“That investor or that angel investor is going to place who knows how many bets, and you're gonna place one during this period of time. You are an investor of your time, and that is one thing that you can do during this period, and you have to take that really …”
Willem Van LanckerApr 26, 2025▶ 12:51Willem Van Lancker on Terrain’s Radical New Founder Program
Opinion
Van Lancker: VC pushes capital onto founders before they are ready
“The venture industrial complex tries to, you know, give you capital and, you know, quite frankly, perhaps before you're ready and make those commitments and those decisions before you're ready.”
Willem Van LanckerApr 26, 2025▶ 2:50Willem Van Lancker on Terrain’s Radical New Founder Program
Insight
Van Lancker: Upfront VC stipends diminish founder urgency and hurt decision-making
“The reason to not attach capital to it is one, both for that point of commitment and restriction, but the other is I think it makes you make decisions differently. I think that you either, if you have that stipend and you're hanging out in the offices and you'…”
Willem Van LanckerApr 26, 2025▶ 6:55Willem Van Lancker on Terrain’s Radical New Founder Program
Insight
Van Lancker: Customer polling is obsolete for breakthrough startups facing funded competitors
“In the environment today where software has eaten the world, and you should assume that if you're onto something interesting, there are two or three other competent, well-funded, You know, good people going after it as well. It has to be, you know, from that k…”
Willem Van LanckerApr 26, 2025▶ 10:33Willem Van Lancker on Terrain’s Radical New Founder Program
Opinion
Van Lancker: VCs Piling Into Incubations Will Make Mistakes
“I see a lot of VCs piling into it, I think for the wrong reasons and are going to make some mistakes. I think there's a real alchemy that it takes to get it right.”
Willem Van LanckerApr 26, 2025▶ 14:30Willem Van Lancker on Terrain’s Radical New Founder Program
Disclosure
Van Lancker: Terrain Free Agency offers founders $350k+ in non-dilutive resources
“Every person that participates in free agency gets access to over 350 grand in compute resources and service resources, that sort of thing. So there is some capital to deploy, you know, via technology. That is not, you know, dilutive or anything in that regard…”
Willem Van LanckerApr 26, 2025▶ 5:09Willem Van Lancker on Terrain’s Radical New Founder Program
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